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A Very Silly Discussion About [Matter Teleporters]
The Ender
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This is a matter teleporter as shown on Star Trek. We don't quite have these yet (though 3D printing technology is becoming ever more impressive these days), but every nerd worth their salt dreams of the day when we do finally invent this sort of wonder-technology (especially nerds like me, who live on the outskirts of small towns with limited transportation and who have no personal vehicle).
It sure would be wonderful to simply get off your couch, watch blue lights swirl around you, and then suddenly be at work / at school / at Wal Mart, wouldn't it?
Boy it sure would be, Ender!
Wouldn't it be, though?
Now, there is a lot of nerd debate about how exactly a matter teleporter works, but the consensus is mostly this:
The pad that you step onto? That is actually just a giant matter disintegration machine, mostly. You're disintegrated on one end, and the information for how to build an exact copy of you is sent off to wherever you want to be 'teleported'. You're then instantly (or near-instantly) reconstructed at that location (or, to put it another way, an exact atom-for-atom copy of you is built on a new pad).
...Wait. So the 'teleportation' machine actually just kills me? And then clones me?
That is certainly one way of looking at it, yes.
So, here is the thought experiment, D&D :
This is an emerging new technology. As an act of Incredulous Narrator Fiat, I'm positing that it has somehow emerged into the civilian / commercial sector while somehow bypassing the military (for now). You have the option of buying one for your home at relatively little cost. They are not power hogs (again, via INF). If you have kids, their school has chosen to buy one that parents & students can connect to; if you have a traditional job, your employer has decided to get one that all employees can connect to. Aside from that, every B&M store that you shop at has one, every post office has one, every bank has one, every government office has one.
Do you buy it? If you do, what do you use it for? Do you use it for personal transportation? Do you let your family use it for personal transportation?
...Does it make a mess?
We'll say it's not quite as squeaky clean as the Star Trek version. It leaves a little bit of fine charcoal dust behind after use, as well as some sticky residue that builds-up and has to be cleaned-off every week or so. There's a little ash tray under the unit that most of the dust falls into.
...Is it safe?
The manufacturer, government & a few independent consumer advocacy groups claim it is safe, and there have been no incidents you know of so far. There are some rumors of things gone horribly wrong, of course... but when aren't there rumors?
...How 'same' is the new copy of me?
Via INF, we'll say that you're exactly identical, atom for atom. Same personality, same memories, same fingerprints, same DNA signature, etc.
...Does it hurt to be disintegrated?
Not according to anyone that's used it.
...Of course, given that the original person was disintegrated, they couldn't really give an opinion of any sensations they felt.
...Can I just do the Homer Simpson thing, where he reached through the teleporter to grab beer and sandwiches out of his fridge without actually committing his whole body to the process?
Of course not. The machine would simply disintegrate your arm and make a new, identical arm on the other pad.
Is it secure?
According to the manufacturer, it is quite secure.
What's stoping someone from messing with the disintegrator end to make an army of themselves? Or kill someone with a perfect alibi?
Via INF, I'm going to veto either of possibilities via some sort of safety protocols. The machine can only transmit you one time per disintegration, and the manufacturer assures the world that the system is totally, completely 'unhackable'.
Wait, does it move all of the stuff across to the other side to reassemble it, so that you can ship down unlimited quantities of iron ore from Mars or whatever?
Or is it assembling with materials on-site?
edit: also either way I'd be wary of power outages between getting in the sending end and getting out of the receiving end. That's a hell of a packet to drop.
It's using on site material, so you couldn't use it to transport quantities of, say, Plutonium around.
THE WHEEL TURNS
Whether or not you have personally decided to use this technology, in passing years, it becomes widely adopted by society. Disintegration pads become as common in households as computers, televisions or phones. Infrastructure begins to adapt to the notion that people can simply go whenever they want, whenever they want, at near-light speed (plus or minus 5~ seconds: the time it takes for a receiving pad to build a copy of a 'traveler').
To those that do not yet use these pads:
There are very serious economic and social consequences. People who opt for traditional means of transportation are viewed as Luddites, and people who use gasoline powered vehicles are largely seen as hazards to themselves, their fellow people and the environment. It becomes extremely difficult to adopt to new workforce demands without using a 'teleporter' (or, as you like to call them, 'suicide pad'), commutes become longer as cities sprawl outwards... some places become entirely impossible to access without a pad: including the best schools and most acclaimed social venues. Public transit begins to disappear, replaced with pads. Airports begin to shut down. Fuel becomes a very, very heavily taxed commodity.
What is your breaking point for adoption? Do you even have one, do you think?
To those that do currently use these pads:
To the surprise of nobody, it's not quite as 'perfect' as described. You know this because sometimes you're materialized while missing a sock that you're very sure you had on when you went to the disintegration pad, or having unkempt hair that you're very sure you had showered & brushed before heading to the disintegration pad. The most serious errors were that one time you were materialized without your wallet, and another time you were materialized without your very expensive glasses (and God knows you're blind without them).
The manufacturer insists that cases of reconstruction error are simply impossible, and that people just must be mis-remembering exactly what state they were in before stepping onto the disintegration pad.
How much does this bother you? We'll say that the sum of any losses due to disintegration certainly do not come close to the weight of what you've gained by being to instantly transport (and yes, you do think it's pretty much just transport, philosopher Luddites be damned!) from one place to another. Does it bother you at all that either your memory of your old self is imperfect, or the machine's reconstruction of you is imperfect, or both?
Matter teleporters, D&D :
How does the sanctity of your body stack-up against impossibly wonderful convenience & efficiency?
With Love and Courage
The Ender on
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I'm just curious if I'm going to have to worry about some drunken frat boys hitting the wrong button and teleporting into my house while I'm at work.
According to the manufacturer, it is quite secure.
Pfft; the Portal Gun is a pipe dream fiction, sir, unlike the completely realistic technology posited in this thought experiment.
I would however, get the portable home version for amazon deliveries.
If it WAS a continuous consciousness, then why would we bother keeping bodies identical? (Unless we had to to preserve consciousness.) Everyone would use it for bodily transformation. The matter teleporter would double as a Ryan Gosling-ator.
I think it owuld have to be illegal to focibly transport someone by one, i.e. police couldn't move perps with them, as if you DO consider it 'death-and-cloning' then it IS 'death-and-cloning', if you get what I mean.
Like, I walk through it, I still say 'I am Kamar, I just walked through a matter transporter" but other guy goes through and he is a broken shell saying "I am Otherguy's Clone, and I remember the real me dying oh god existential crisis."
Perception is, very interestingly, 100% of the impact here.
It'd be rad for shipping goods, though.
Via INF, I'm going to veto either of possibilities via some sort of safety protocols. The machine can only transmit you one time per disintegration, and the manufacturer assures the world that the system is totally, completely 'unhackable'.
And what of the immortal soul in such transactions? Can this machine transmit and reattach it as well? Or is it lost forever, leaving a soulless body to wander the world in despair?
Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We must Dissent"
It is critical for most of the purposes of this discussion that they are not teleporters.
They are far cooler, more useful, and less morally ambiguous. They are basically free energy machines, because they support infinite falling. Also photonic energy storage, yo.
After a while safety will be a known factor, assuming it is reasonably close to the level of safety associated with driving, I'd be one teleporting motherfuck. Just thinking about what it would do for commuting is kinda amazing. Though perhaps I'd have some difficulty completing with everyone else in the world who was willing to use the technology.
It would make okc a lot less depressing, and so long as the world stayed a diverse enough place to merit travel, I'd see every bit of it.
Or is it assembling with materials on-site?
edit: also either way I'd be wary of power outages between getting in the sending end and getting out of the receiving end. That's a hell of a packet to drop.
It's using on site material, so you couldn't use it to transport quantities of, say, Plutonium around.
Damn, I had at least two models of perpetual motion machine ready. Oh well.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Ehhh... Would kinda run into issues of limited supplies for something like a masstransit system, no?
All I know is it gets me from A to B without killing me. What ELSE does it do in the process that I can't verify? Did it rewrite portions of my DNA? Who knows! Alter chunks of my memory? Couldn't say, I can't phone up disintegrated me and ask now can I? Reverse my vasectomy? Give me a vasectomy? No idea!
2.) What is your state of mind upon exiting the teleportation device? Do you remember why you used the teleportation device in the first place for example.
3.) What are the long term side effects? Would using this perhaps speed up the rate of which a cancer spreads? Could it lead to a genetic change of some sort?
4.) By which method does the machine actually disintegrate you? Are you pulled apart atom by atom? Or are the bonds simply disrupted so that you fall apart; so to speak.
Wouldn't everyone have to go naked to keep from illegally infringing on the patents of everything you were carrying?
There's an episode of 'The Outer Limits' that covers some of the ethical problems in this thread.
I any case I think it's highly unlikely that we'll ever be able to truly teleport/entangle macro-scale objects.
Fuck all y'all.
even aside from:
a) the potential physical impossibility of creating a truly exact copy of another physical system or entity; even if it were possible to have all that information, one of the (potentially important) properties of a given bit of matter is its position, which is entirely different from the original!
b) the problem of duplication: if the machine can create an exact copy of you elsewhere, what happens if it does that and doesn't disintegrate the original at the exact same time? It seems to me there are clearly going to be two separate, distinct consciousnesses, one of which is you, one of which is not. So stepping into the machine is just like stepping into an instantaneous incinerator, when it comes to your consciousness as a particular entity and mind.
*winks* Well, don't worry about it in that case. Until the day you snap from the subconscious/unconscious memories of feeling the following every time you use it. Maybe. Have fun!
Foolish nonsense. That woman objects to every new technology, every new invention. Blah blah soul, blah blah god, blah blah nerve stapling.
These new teleporters are quite safe! Why I visited one of the outer colonies to see the fungal blooms just last week. And manufactured by Morgan Industries too
Zakharov-designed, Morgan-built!
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....
That aside, no, I probably would steer well clear of this... at least for a few years.
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fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I mean, I fail to see how the person at the other end isn't me. Because it's not exactly the same cells as the previous version?
The guy I am now isn't exactly the same collection of matter as the guy I was yesterday.
I'm still me, obviously, so there has to be something else to it.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
People generally get around this by arguing for continuity of some sort.
Every moment of your life thus far is connected to every other moment by some sequence of temporal and spatial continuity. Who you are right now is connected to who you are one nanosecond from now by minute changes in your constituent matter, basically in the same way that successive frames of animation are connected.
If you take an animation of someone walking across the screen and then eliminate all the frames between the first and last, is it really still an animation of a guy walking across the screen? Or is it a couple of separate still shots? The continuity is important.
Basically, there's no "obviously" to it. It's a fairly complicated philosophical issue without a clear-cut answer. Which is why it's interesting.
You kill yourself every time, don't think I could work myself around that part.
On the flip side if this technology exists then by necessity that means humans are functionally immortal. Since it does not need to rebuild damaged or diseased tissue, when it could just as easily swap that for healthy. But I take it this specific teleporter does not do that.
Because that concept, of slow regeneration, is not new to us as a concept.
This invention 100% clearly kills you, this is obvious, only it recreates you on the other end some moment later. At best I would describe you as a clone of yourself. If that makes the new you less authentic or not is mostly philosophic I guess.
As far as killing myself over and over again in a fancy 3D printer? No thanks.
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Why is authenticity important in this case?
Though I would wager to a lot of people it would be important, to me at least.
creating an exact copy of a person at the other end seems like it would be insufficient to "transmit" their consciousness, since if you did not disintegrate the original you would clearly have two distinct people, very similar but with separate minds.
the question is "would you step into it" and given our lack of understanding of consciousness, the best answer seems to be "hell to the naw"